NORML's Chart of Legalization Polls – data compiled by Russ Belville from various organizations asking a form of the question "Should marijuana be legalized in America?" (click graphic for full-sized version)

The successes of Prop 215 are well documented. Two years following its passage, the rest of the West Coast and Alaska passed their own medical marijuana initiatives, with close to equal (OR 55%) or greater (WA 59% & AK 58%) support than California voters gave Prop 215.

The next decade saw twelve more states and the District of Columbia passing medical marijuana laws, with seven of those states doing so through the legislature. Five of the citizen initiatives topped 60% support. As states passed medical marijuana, some added more conditions for qualification, some legislated dispensary operations, and the most recent have instituted protections for the rights of patients to drive, work, have a home, get an organ transplant, and raise their kids. In some ways, medical marijuana has improved in fifteen years.

In the 21st Century, medical marijuana support has flatlined and support for legalization of marijuana has almost doubled.

We’ve seen how courts, legislatures, and law enforcement have supported medical exceptions – by trying to make those exceptions as narrow and costly as possible. No state followed California’s lead in making marijuana available by doctor’s recommendation for “any other illness for which marijuana provides relief”, instead crafting strict condition lists and patient registries. The West Coast standard of a dozen or more home-grown plants became 3-6 plants or no home growing at all. The precedent of a half-pound or more of usable medicine became 1 or 2 ounces, tracked to the gram and filmed at all times. Courts all across the Ninth Circuit have ruled that medical marijuana use does not protect patients from job discrimination and patients still experience housing, child custody, and medical procedure discrimination on a daily basis.

Medical marijuana laws have become stricter since California's Prop 215

The basis of medical marijuana restrictions and discrimination depends on a federal Schedule I designation that defines the use of cannabis by healthy people a criminal act. These restrictions, dropping poll numbers, and failing medical marijuana initiatives indicate a substantial portion of Americans that believe “compassionate use” is a ruse (I wonder what gave them that idea?).

I believe that there are three basic stands on medical marijuana among the voters not personally invested in the issue:

The people who believe pot smoking is evil and will never support anyone using it for any reason (“prohibitionists”).

The people who believe pot smoking is evil, but letting cancer and AIDS patients suffer is more evil (“medicalizers”).

The people who don’t believe pot smoking is evil and would allow any adult to use it (“legalizers”).

If there are 1.5 million pot smokers protected from arrest by medical marijuana laws, why have marijuana arrests continued to climb?

The prohibitionists will never support medical marijuana and the legalizers have always supported medical marijuana. So the fate of any medical marijuana proposal rests on whether a coalition of legalizers and medicalizers can form a majority. Over the past fifteen years, forming that majority has required more restrictive definitions of medical marijuana to assuage the medicalizers who increasingly think evil pot smokers are getting through the loopholes. Worse, forming that coalition requires legalizers to tacitly agree that healthy pot smoking is evil.

When medical marijuana began in the Nineties, the rallying cry was “If there’s going to be a ‘War on Drugs’, let’s get the sick and dying off the battlefield.” If that’s the case, why do we continue to see a rise in “casualties” on the battlefield? Even in medical marijuana states, annual arrests of cannabis consumers continue to rise. All medical marijuana has done for marijuana convicts is improve their population’s average level of health in sixteen states.

This is not to argue that we give up on medical marijuana campaigns. It is to argue that the campaigns need to be re-framed away from “Oh, no, this isn’t legalization at all!” to “Yes, we’re going to legalize for sick people first”. Until marijuana is supported as a good thing for all and not an evil thing we allow medical exceptions for, medical marijuana patients will remain in second-class citizenship and healthy marijuana smokers will remain behind bars.